The Problem with Authenticity & The Psychology That Fuels War

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Today, on something you should know, the amazing things that happen when two people kiss.

Then, there's a lot of advice that says you should be more authentic.

But there's also another view.

Authenticity as a concept is practically meaningless and not very helpful.

Whether you think that you are acting in good faith or bad faith is part of who you really are.

And even if you try really, really hard, you can only be you.

Plus, just how heavy is your purse or briefcase?

Because it could matter.

And the fascinating psychology of war and why humans seem to need to fight.

Ultimately, I don't want my children to go off and fight a war.

I think that would be a waste.

But if we are not prepared to do that when we must, then we will be easy pickings for those who are prepared to do that.

All this today on something you should know.

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Something you should know.

Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life.

Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

You've probably heard the phrase and the lyrics in the song, a kiss is just a kiss.

Oh no, that's just not true.

Hi, and and welcome to something you should know.

We're starting this episode talking about kissing because when two people kiss, there's a lot going on.

Scientific reports say kissing increases the levels of oxytocin, that's the body's natural calming chemical, and also increases endorphins, the body's feel-good chemicals, and aids in feelings of romantic attachment.

According to anthropologist Helen Fisher, kissing is kind of a mate assessment tool.

Much of your brain's cortex is devoted to picking up sensations from around your lips, cheeks, tongue, and nose.

Out of 12 cranial nerves, five of them are picking up the data from around your mouth.

It is built to pick up the most sensitive feelings, the most intricate tastes and smells and touch and temperature.

And so when you're kissing somebody, you're getting a lot of data.

Don't underestimate the workout your mouth gets during a makeout session.

Researchers say you use 30 muscles while kissing and all that kissing helps keep your cheeks tight.

Kissing boosts immunity too.

Kissing has long been thought to be a way of passing bacteria which then strengthens the body's defenses.

And that is something you should know.

Everywhere you turn, it seems people are talking about authenticity.

Be authentic.

Show up as your true self.

But here's the problem.

What if you don't have just one self?

I know I don't.

I adapt depending on where I am and who I'm with.

At work, at home, at a party, or with kids, I'm not the same version of me.

So if authenticity means showing up as only one real you,

something seems wrong with the whole idea.

My guest today, Tomas Chamaro Premusic, argues exactly that.

He's Chief Innovation Officer at Manpower Group and a professor of business psychology at Columbia University and the University College of London.

He's author of a book called Don't Be Yourself, Why Authenticity is Overrated and What to Do Instead.

Hey, Tomas, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Thank you for having me.

So as I mentioned, I've never really understood the whole idea of being more authentic.

Like I am who I am.

And if I do it, it's authentically me.

And

so I'm not on board, I guess, with the whole movement of be more authentic.

You are part of a minority, I would say, of people, certainly in America, given that the authenticity cult, you know, translated into kind of mantras such as don't worry about what people think of you.

Always be true to your values, no matter what, bring your whole self to work.

If you think you're great, you are, and always be honest with yourself and others.

These are the kind of things that actually seem to be almost the kind of North Star guiding

people's behavior, or at least attempting to.

I mean, on the surface of it, when I hear, you know, you have to be your authentic self

implies that you have to be the same with everybody, that in every situation, you have to be you, and that that's one person, and that that's you.

But everybody's different in every different situation.

You're not the same with your kids as you are with your boss, with your wife, with your...

So the premise falls apart.

I have kids age eight and five.

And, you know, interestingly, Even at the age of three or four, children know that they need to behave better when they're invited into other people's homes than in their own home.

And that's because they're aware of the etiquette.

So, you know, it would be ludicrous to lose that ability as adults.

Likewise, you know, work is not an invitation to impose your uncensored or uninhibited self on others or to bring your whole self.

It's an invitation to bring the best and most professional version of you, leaving the bad ones, you know,

impulsive, you, grumpy, you, opinionated, you at home.

And of course, I feel sorry for your family or the people at home because you're leaving those parts with them.

But, you know, better not to bring them to the office.

So my guess is that if we had someone here who is a big proponent of authenticity and being more authentic, they would say, no, no, no, no, no, no.

This is what you're saying is not what we mean.

And my assumption would be that what they mean is to be your best self.

To be authentic is to be as good as you can be.

It's useful in those instances to actually look at the evidence, you know, from scientific studies.

There's a lot of academic research in this area.

And there's maybe two or three things that I would highlight as important yet kind of

not

commonly known facts about authenticity.

The first and most important one is that there is just no way of objectively determining whether somebody is authentic or not.

And so right now, we have two kinds of measures of authenticity.

One is simply asking people whether they feel authentic about their behavior or not.

And of course, that's extremely unreliable.

That's a bit like asking people whether they have a great sense of humor.

95% of people think yes and say yes.

And how many people are actually funny?

Or asking them whether they are creative, whether they are talented, or whether they are a good person.

You know, our own self-views have zero reliability and accuracy predicting how other people see us.

And then the other, more important one, is to ask others whether they find us authentic or not.

Now that, while it might lead to kind of an interrater agreement in the sense that different people tend to agree whether they find somebody authentic or not, actually, as we know, that is very, very contaminated.

That kind of measure of authenticity in the eye of the beholder is contaminated by whether you like the person or not, whether you align with their values or with their political views.

For example, you know, the degree to which you find Obama more authentic than Trump or vice versa is predicted entirely by your political affiliation.

And also, what's interesting is that research shows that we find others authentic when they have high emotional intelligence because they're really good at skilled self-presentation.

They're very good at strategically putting on a professional self or, you know, harnessing their work or professional reputation in a way that is believable.

At times, yes, it means paying attention to consistency between what you say and what to do, but mostly it has to do with actually being more other-oriented, focusing on being valuable to others rather than

unleashing your unfiltered or unedited self on others.

So those things are really, really important.

And of course, you know, there is a wonderful paradox underlying the thought that somebody is telling you to ignore ignore what other people tell you and to just be yourself.

I mean, that's somebody telling you how to act and what to do.

So, by definition, if you try to ignore it, you can't.

Well, I've always found it puzzling that when people talk about being your authentic self, it's always about the good qualities, your core values, and your core beliefs.

But part of every person's authentic self is another side.

You might call it a darker side of bad thoughts, or temp you have a temper, or, you know, that's still part of who you are.

But when the people who talk about authenticity talk about it, they don't say, well, yeah, make sure you bring that part.

Let me give you an extreme example, but I'm sure you'll understand the reasoning or the logic.

By most parameters and definitions, Adolf Hitler was an authentic leader.

First, you know, he displayed great consistency between what he said and what he did.

Secondly, he was true to his values.

Unfortunately, they were extremely toxic, antisocial, repugnant, and destructive.

Third, he didn't care very much about what other people thought of him.

And fourth, you could also argue,

he was non-compromising and, you know,

completely disinterested in basically following external norms or external parameters of morality.

That might sound extreme, but if you think of a much, much less harmful and less extreme

example, the majority of people in the workplace today feel that their values are right.

They have lost the ability to entertain that perhaps people with opposite values might have a...

might have a point and might be right.

And this notion that

others should adjust to our character, our way of being, is a very egocentric, narcissistic, and entitled kind of approach to interpersonal relations, but actually is what dominates most of the current or modern etiquette, not just in the workplace, but especially in online or digital settings.

So, I think there is a notion that being more authentic is a good thing.

That generally,

how can you argue with that?

It seems like that would be a good thing.

But what I've never understood is

why, what is the benefit,

the reported benefit to being more authentic?

If I become more authentic by the definition of authenticity that people talk about, what good will come from it?

Well, I think people tell you that, but in a way, you know, a good way to understand the authenticity cult is that demands, requests, or suggestions to others,

you know, being authentic, are really not very authentic at all.

I mean, certainly, you know, if you think about the epicenter or or the vortex of the authenticity cult, which is probably Los Angeles and Hollywood and, you know, kind of a social media, I mean, nothing is less authentic than that.

But of course, you know, you can see, you don't have to be very cynical or skeptical to understand why it might be in other people's interests to encourage you to be authentic, because it's a little bit like, you know, if you're playing poker with someone and you tell them, you know, just tell me what your hand is or reveal your cards,

it makes things easy for you, right?

If they do so, I mean, that's a lot easier than trying to read between the lines, trying to exercise emotional intelligence or political skills to really interpret other people's behaviors.

And of course, you know, I do think that generally speaking, we prefer others to be not just nice to us, but to also truly mean it deep down.

But at the same time, let's accept or agree on the fact that, you know, most people prefer fake politeness politeness than authentic rudeness or, you know, a kind of genuine obnoxiousness.

Yeah, I do.

I certainly prefer that.

I would rather somebody pretend to be nice to me than be a genuine person.

And I think you're not an exception there.

You and I are part of the norm, you know, we all do.

We're talking about authenticity with Tomas Chamaro Pramusic.

He is a professor of business psychology and author of the book, Don't Be Yourself, Why Authenticity is Overrated and What to Do Instead.

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So Tomas,

I'm not sure I'm able to really tell how big a deal this is for average people.

You know, I talked to doing this podcast, I talked to a lot of authors, psychologists.

I mean, the idea of authenticity comes up a lot in other interviews.

So

I'm not sure I have a clear view of, are people really jumping on the bandwagon?

Is authenticity a big deal?

In the year 2024 or 2023?

Authenticity was, you know, kind of chosen as word of the year by Merriam-Webster.

And that was based not just on the importance that we attribute to authenticity and social media interactions, but also, you know, now with the rise of artificial intelligence, it's increasingly difficult to know whether you're dealing with a human or a bot or a synthetic kind of a version of a human, a deep fake or deep digital clone.

But more importantly, you know, whether it is restaurants, I mean, you know, people love to think that they're eating authentic Mexican, authentic Italian, authentic Chinese.

By the way, just like with restaurants, if people tell you what they are authentic, you can probably assume they're not.

You know, it's something that kind of crosses from restaurant to humans.

But then,

you know,

in the world of kind of commerce or consumerism, people will pay 50 or 100 times more for a diamond if they think it's authentic than if they assume it's synthetic, even though no machinery or equipment is capable of differentiating between synthetic, lab-grown, and real, genuine kind of natural diamonds.

And at the same time, people love the idea that leaders should be authentic.

Let's go back to 2016, when Trump

was deemed a more competent politician or debater than Hillary Clinton on the basis that he was more more authentic and she was not authentic.

Again, an attribution, right, that people make.

So, generally speaking, whether we're talking about restaurants, food, diamonds, designer handbag, or people,

the assumption is that

not just authenticity is better than the reverse, but that we're somehow capable of actually identifying or quantifying how authentic something or someone is, which of course isn't true.

And by the way, you know, technically speaking, anything you do is part of who you really are.

Whether you think that you are acting in good faith or bad faith,

you know, interestingly, research shows that when people behave properly or do something that leads to success, they interpret that as their authentic self because it's, of course, a way to rationalize that you are amazing when good things happen to you.

And when bad things happen to you or you're acting in a way that offends or upsets others,

you are basically rationalizing that as saying, oh, that wasn't me, that was out of character, I was influenced by the situation or whatever that is.

But, you know, anything you do is part of who you really are.

And even if you try really, really hard, you can only be you.

It's not possible for you to be anybody else.

And you often hear people who get caught doing something that is out of character, saying things like, oh, I don't know, that wasn't me.

Well, yeah, it was.

It was you.

You did it.

They say it's not them as if they're disowning it, but that is them.

Exactly.

I mean, you know, there is this thing called self-monitoring or paying attention to how your behavior impacts others.

By the way, you know, other people are an incredible source of feedback.

Feedback from others helps us understand our limitations, what we're good at.

You know, whether you're a top athlete, a musician, an artist, or an average worker, the best way to understand your talents and your limitations and your flaws or weaknesses is to internalize other people's views of you.

That isn't a sign of weakness.

It's how you grow and develop.

So again, you know, you will always be you no matter where you go and what to do, but paying attention to your behavior and making an effort to display the best version of yourself is what makes you more successful and effective.

So the but the best version of yourself isn't necessarily your authentic self.

It is the best version of yourself.

Yeah, the vast majority, if not all human beings, inhabit multiple selves.

There is this wonderful but fairly neglected construct or concept in social psychology called self-complexity, which basically talks about all the dimensions of your identity.

So imagine, you know, there's a you who is a podcaster, a broadcaster, a media person, a consultant, a father, a husband, a son.

And, you know, the notion that anybody, any employer or organization is interested in us bringing our whole self or displaying all of these dimensions is just ludicrous.

Work and any high-stake interaction with others or social situation is an invitation to display the relevant aspects of ourselves.

And when you're curating your reputation, you need to understand what aspects of yourself or personality people want to see.

You know, maybe to use a very simple and relevant or pertinent example for most of us: a job interview.

A job interview isn't an invitation for you to show the real you or the full spectrum of your self-complexity to others.

It is an invitation to demonstrate that you have the necessary social skills to understand the social etiquette and

display some pro-social tendencies.

By the way,

if you're engaging in such deliberate and exaggerated deception and impression management that it's very blatant to others that you're faking it, you pay a high price.

So that's not the goal either.

But the goal is to, if you like, be yourself, but on a good day.

Well, and I've always thought too that you could kind of hide behind this authentic label where if you are someone who is unpleasant, unkind, not very caring, you could just say, well, that's who I am.

That's my authentic self.

And so I'm being authentic.

Exactly.

Or, for example, a manager says, you know, well, you know, I'm not very good at empathizing with others or showing consideration or showing appreciation or, you know, controlling my emotions.

That's just how I am.

So, you know, my employees have to deal with my moodiness, grumpiness, impulsivity, and that's just who I am, as opposed to should I not try to become somebody better?

Would I not benefit from trying to understand other people's point of view as opposed to broadcasting my unsolicited views and opinions on these controversial topics?

Because that's how I think about things.

One makes you more successful.

The other might be more comforting because it requires no self-control, no self-regulation, and no emotional intelligence.

Well, I like conversations like this because you take something that's pretty well regarded and pretty well accepted, authenticity, and pull at the strings a little bit and unravel it.

And

it makes for an interesting discussion.

After all of this, I think the most important,

I would say, conclusion is that authenticity as a concept is...

practically meaningless and not very helpful.

And we don't need authenticity as a concept to assess either ourselves or others and determine what we like, who we like, and who we don't.

A perfect way to end it.

I've been talking with Tomas Chamaro Promusic.

He is the Chief Innovation Officer at Manpower Group and a professor of business psychology at Columbia University and University College of London.

His book is called Don't Be Yourself, Why Authenticity is Overrated and What to Do Instead.

And there is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes.

Tomas, thank you so much.

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When you think about it, war is one of the strangest things humans do.

Killing people, destroying things, it makes no logical sense.

And yet history shows that war has been a constant.

Across centuries and civilizations, there's never really been a time without war.

Which raises the haunting question, is war part of human nature, something we're wired to do?

You would think that as society has advanced, war would fade away.

but instead conflicts rage on all around the world.

My guest today, Nicholas Wright, has a fascinating fascinating perspective on why that is.

He's a neuroscientist at University College London, Georgetown, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.,

where he also advises the Pentagon Joint Staff.

He's author of a book called Warhead, How the Brain Shapes War and War Shapes the Brain.

Hi, Nicholas.

Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Hi, Mike.

Thank you for having me.

So given that war has been around since people,

is it your view,

because it seems like it, that war is just human nature.

That's what people do.

I'm afraid to say I think that you are entirely correct.

It is part of what it is to be human.

All of us, every brain in the world, yours, mine, every listener's, is built to win, or at least survive, a fight.

That's not everything we do, but that's part of what it is to be human.

And yet it seems, I mean, you would certainly know better, but it seems as if attitudes about war are different now today.

I remember watching, when I was watching Downton Abbey back when it was first on, and

when they went off to World War I, they portrayed young men in England as like being, like really looking forward.

This is going to be great fun.

We'll go save our country.

And then they came to realize the horrors of war, but that in fact

nobody looks at war that way anymore that nobody looks at this as oh this is going to be great it's as some people said it's old men sending young men off to die

you are entirely correct but equally you could say yes in the run-up to world war one uh people were too gung-ho about war but then look at the run-up to world war ii In the run-up to World War II, we really needed to stand up to a regime that was led by Adolf Hitler.

That was the last general war between all the great powers in the world.

And we really needed to stand up to Adolf Hitler, to Nazi Germany, in large part because actually the Germans in World War II were very good at fighting.

You know, on land, certainly the Germans were better.

on land at fighting than the British or the French or the Americans.

It's very easy for us to forget that.

And if you are a country that does not believe that it can and should fight and fight effectively and fight to win, then you will be very easy prey for those who do not share your beliefs in peace.

So here is a really naive sounding question, but I think it's one people think about.

So in World War I and World War II, we were at war with Germany and Japan,

and even in the Revolutionary War, we were at war with England.

And now we're all friends, we're all allies, we all get along.

And I think the question is, well, why couldn't we have sat down and figured it out as we eventually did without the war part?

Like, just sit down like grown-ups and figure it out.

And obviously, you know, with someone like Hitler, that's probably not possible.

But it does seem that as civilization

matures, that war seems so archaic, like so unnecessary.

And I think you're absolutely right.

So, for example, take one of the most prominent sets of ideas that came around in the last 15, 20 years about war, which was the idea put out by Steven Pinker that we're becoming increasingly rational, war is irrational, wars are decreasing, the arc of history is tending towards peace, so it's all going to be okay.

I think he's probably right that wars are decreasing.

He's not wrong, but unfortunately he's dangerously incomplete.

And then we saw that when Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine, right?

That didn't fit into his narrative.

The problem is, even if wars are decreasing in frequency, that doesn't mean that wars can't break out.

And when they do break out, we need to be able to fight effectively, otherwise we will lose.

And it's important to remember that the democracies today, if we don't use our brains, if we don't understand how humans fight well, and bear in mind that the human brain is always going to be the central weapon of war between human groups,

if we don't do that, we could lose.

So, the democracies in May 1940,

Britain and France were facing the Germans

in the Battle of France, and the Germans

had fewer trained men, fewer tanks, fewer planes, fewer guns,

but they had been thinking about how to harness things about our brain like surprise, shock, skill, will and daring.

And unfortunately for us, they cut through the French and British armies and defeated them within seven weeks.

I have often wondered in Nazi Germany, when German soldiers were sent to invade other countries,

what were they thinking?

What had they been told to believe that gave them that will to fight when this isn't their country?

They're invading another country.

This isn't yours.

It's important to remember that when Hitler went to war, invaded Poland in September 1939,

a lot of Germans did not, you know, ordinary members of the population did not want to go to war.

But Hitler was in charge.

It was an authoritarian state and they went to war.

People generally do fight.

However we feel about that now in peacetime, we look forward and we think, oh, maybe we would choose differently.

That isn't really how things pan out.

Millions of people in the democracies thought that they would be pacifists.

But actually, when war broke out, almost nobody in somewhere like Britain or America actually became a conscientious objector.

And of course, you weren't allowed to be a conscientious objector in somewhere like Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Russia.

So you advise the Pentagon.

You would have some insight into this.

One of the criticisms of war is that one of the reasons we have it is because of the military-industrial complex, that war is good for business.

So we have hawks in the government and outside the government pushing for conflicts because it's good for business.

What about that?

It's a great question.

And it brings me to two points.

The first thing is that humans are very varied.

So yes, there are some people who are warmongers and there are some people who

would argue for peace and there are lots of people who are in the middle.

And I think in general,

most

people will defend their country, their homeland, their group, whatever it is, if they feel that they must.

Now, in terms of a military-industrial complex, so this brings me on to a really important point, which is about wisdom.

So who sort of was the main person who coined the phrase or popularized it?

Was Dwight Eisenhower.

Dwight Eisenhower is a US president who maybe has fallen a bit out of fashion, but in my eyes, he's one of the really most

inspiring US presidents.

He was the military leader who oversaw the Allies during the Allied invasion on D-Day.

And then he became president in the early 1950s.

And for Eisenhower, and it was he who warned of the military-industrial complex, he knew that the way that a country like America was going to be able to win something like the Cold War against a formidable competitor like the Soviet Union, he knew that it was going to require wisdom, not just being clever, right?

Coming up with some clever interesting you know out-of-the-box thinking but actually being wise because there is no there was no simple answer to winning and the way the united states was going to win or at least not lose was preparing for the long haul which was another one of his phrases which i think is really important this is going to be generational for example we're facing with china now

it's going to be the long haul you have to thrive domestically

you have to push back where you can

and you have to stay true to your to yourself.

And I think that

this is

a world in which, just as with Eisenhower, there are no simple answers because now we could lose domestically through things like the military-industrial complex taking too much money or civil strife.

We could lose in a conventional war, right, over somewhere like Taiwan against somebody like a group like China.

Or we could lose in a third way, which is that we could fight a nuclear war.

Because whatever you do, however many people are dead on the other side, if you fight a nuclear war, you've lost in any meaningful sense.

And so only with wiser decision-making can we avoid all of these different ways of losing.

And again, the most powerful thing we have for wiser decision-making is the human brain and self-knowledge about ourselves as individuals and about ourselves as humanity.

But wise decision-making requires wise decision makers.

And you look at leaders of various countries around the world and you think, yeah, I don't think you can check that box for those people.

They don't seem, they seem kooky sometimes.

The majority of leaders are, you're entirely correct, not very wise.

But if you look

at World War II,

Britain and the United States actually did have leaders who were wise.

If you look at at the early part of the Cold War,

the United States did have leaders who were wise.

Eisenhower, George C.

Marshall, others like that.

So if we just step back for a moment and think what wisdom is, as opposed to just being clever.

So it's a bit like, if you know the Big Bang theory.

You know, the Big Bang theory, they're super clever guys, if you've ever seen that comedy program.

But they always get into pickles.

because

they come up with these clever plans, but they, you know, there's some obviously foreseeable problem where when they do their plan, it runs up against some kind of obviously anticipated problem.

And it's very much like that with wisdom.

We can't just be clever.

We need to be wise.

So wisdom is seeing the bigger picture about ourselves in the world so that our chosen actions can help us live better.

We're never going to be perfect, but we can be better.

And I think

that's the most we can hope for as humans.

But can war become outdated, obsolete?

Could Steven Pinker be right that

we can't just keep blowing each other up, especially with nuclear weapons, because then we blow ourselves out of existence?

I mean, I hate to say it, but I mean, we can keep blowing each other up.

And I think as the world is showing us

today in, you know, Sudan or Gaza or Ukraine or tensions rising in East Asia, it's perfectly possible that we will continue

people be blowing each other up.

That said, that's only ever going to be part of

who we are.

Can we avoid nuclear war?

I hope that we can.

We have thus far since nuclear weapons were first used just over 80 years ago.

So only still only a handful of countries have nuclear weapons.

So it is possible to limit even these most powerful and destructive weapons.

Now war will always change.

So in military circles, they will often say the nature of war is the same.

War is always going to be the same fundamentally because war is politically motivated violence between human groups, okay, at scale.

So it's not just a bar fight, it's, you know, at scale, it's a large conflict.

Now that basic nature to do with our brains and the societies that humans form, that is always going to be the same.

But the character of war, how it pans out, that will always be different.

And one of the things that gives me a lot of optimism is that actually we can train our soldiers to be more restrained, to be wiser.

We can think through a lot of scenarios or problems like nuclear war so that we hopefully can avoid them.

Something I've never understood, we've had wars like Vietnam, Korea, where it didn't seem like the objective was to win the war.

We were, and people would talk about how we were mired in Vietnam, that the United States, if they really wanted to, could have defeated North Vietnam seemingly without a whole lot of trouble, but winning the war didn't seem to be the objective.

And I guess I've never really understood why get in a war if you don't want to win it

that's a really great question so of all of the counterinsurgencies these are wars where you have a big state like america or russia against um an insurgency guerrilla fighters so the americans fought in vietnam right they fought against an insurgency the russians fought in afghanistan they fought against an insurgency

The French fought in Vietnam before the Americans and then in Algeria.

Now, in all four of those cases the big power lost.

The only really big counterinsurgency campaign that anybody won in the Cold War was the British who won in Malaya in the 1950s, the early 1950s.

And one of the reasons for that is that the British understood the political nature of what they were doing.

So it's a famous saying, Carl von Clausewitz is probably the most famous philosopher of war.

You know, one of his most famous quotes is essentially that, you know, war war is the continuation of politics by other means and what the british understood in malaya and implemented better than the americans or the french or the russians was that they tried to use war as a tool to achieve their political goals and they did that very effectively and and that's one of the key things about war it's very difficult to use it effectively as a political tool but if you can then it can be very effective and as the British showed in Malaya in the early 1950s.

Well, that's an interesting insight to it.

You see, I've always thought that one of the things about war is you want to get it over as soon as possible.

You want to go in, fight your war and win and be done with it, not drag it on.

And Vietnam seemed like it just kept dragging on and on and on.

And to what end?

Sometimes you need to change your mind.

Richard Nixon was a man of talents and a man with huge flaws, but ultimately Richard Nixon, he was willing to change his mind.

And ultimately, the United States left.

And changing your mind is important.

This is another thing that I mentioned, the frontal pole, this region right at the front of the brain that

is really crucial for wiser decisions.

And this is an area that I've researched and I've researched changes of mind in the laboratory and I've done work in China and with China's top university, Peking University.

And people differ in their ability to change their minds.

They

differ in their abilities to use new information and change when the world changes.

But really, that is one of the things that makes you a truly wise decision maker.

So Winston Churchill, for example, he was a man who famously perhaps changed his mind too much.

But he was a man who changed his mind when he had to about things that were important.

And that doesn't mean compromising on the things you really care about you know as winston churchill certainly did not compromise on the things he cared about and steered uh the democracies in many ways through the most dangerous period that they went through during the 20th century well i don't remember the exact quote that somebody said war is old men sending young men off to die but but there's something about that that

You know, if this war is so important to these leaders, let them go fight it and not send young people to their death.

No, and I think you're absolutely right.

Like ultimately, I don't want my children to go off and fight a war.

I think that would be a waste of their lives.

But if we are not prepared to do that when we must,

then we will be easy pickings for those who are prepared to do that.

And for a long time, we lived in a world at the end of the Cold War.

where the United States in particular, but the West more generally, had overwhelming military superiority.

And we could basically do whatever we liked.

We could have unrealistic ideas about the world and it didn't really matter.

Well, we don't live in that world anymore.

And if we aren't prepared to defend ourselves, then others will take advantage of us.

Remember the song, you know, give peace a chance.

You know, well, you can only give peace a chance if everybody's willing to give peace a chance.

But if you're the one who's going to lay down and say, let's be peaceful, and somebody else isn't, they're just going to run right over you you and take what you got.

This is a challenge that we face as societies.

You know, are we in the run-up to World War I, where we don't know that nobody really wanted, the intentions were not really to go to war on any of the great powers, and we ended up in war, right?

They were all too tough, and it ended up in a catastrophe.

On the other hand, are we in the run-up to World War II?

Where Hitler was going to go to war, whatever we did.

And we should have been tougher with Hitler.

And that would have saved a lot of pain and misery for literally tens of millions.

So we can never really know about others' intentions.

So you and I have very sophisticated machinery in our brains.

Every listener does too.

And that machinery, that neural machinery, that brain machinery is for working out others' intentions.

Because intentions can often be life and death.

And whilst we need that machinery to cooperate and collaborate, and that machinery enables humans to collaborate better better than any other type of animal across a much wider range of circumstances than any other animal can.

But it also

is deeply involved in deception, deceit, lying.

And that is also part of what it is to be human.

Well, we started this conversation asking the question, is war part of human nature?

And

you'd hate to think so, but from listening to you talk, it kind of seems like it is.

Nicholas Wright has been my guest.

He's a neuroscientist at University College London, Georgetown, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, where he also advises the Pentagon Joint Staff.

He's author of a book called Warhead, How the Brain Shapes War and How War Shapes the Brain.

And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Nicholas, thank you.

Thanks for talking about this.

Brilliant.

Well, thank you very much.

That was really fun.

Great questions.

You've probably heard, or even felt, that carrying around a heavy purse or briefcase can leave you with back, neck, or shoulder pain.

But how heavy is too heavy?

Well, if you put that bag on a scale, if it weighs more than 10% of your body weight, consider rearranging things.

See if there's anything in there you really don't need.

Any more weight than 10% of your body weight should really be worn backpack style.

And if you do opt for a backpack, keep the strap short so it sits high on your back.

A backpack worn low changes your gait and will feel a lot heavier.

Also, avoid carrying it slung over one shoulder, which kind of defeats the whole purpose.

And that is something you should know.

And that ends this episode, but you know, there are hundreds of binge-worthy episodes of this podcast I bet you haven't heard yet that you would really enjoy.

I invite you to dig back into the archives on whatever platform you're listening on and listen to some other episodes.

I think you'll be glad you did.

I'm Mike Carruthers.

Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

I'm often asked, as you might imagine, what podcasts do I listen to?

And I actually have an eclectic taste and I jump around, try different ones.

But I will say that I have a couple I'm very consistent about, and one of them is The Jordan Harbinger Show.

It's kind of a little like something you should know, but Jordan goes in interestingly different directions.

I do know that we share a lot of listeners, a lot of listeners who like this podcast like the Jordan Harbinger Show.

Jordan is really good at getting his guests to open up and share great insights.

Recently, he discussed modern romance scam tactics.

I mean, that's the lowest of the low, but you've got to know about them so you can fight back against them.

And another episode he did was about how society has engineered a generation of lonely men.

The show covers a lot of great topics, which, well, like I said, if you like this show, you're going to like his show.

There's so much here.

Check out the Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

When they were young, the five members of an elite commando group nicknamed the Stone Wolves raged against the oppressive rule of the Kratarakian Empire, which occupies and dominates most of the galaxy's inhabited planets.

The wolves fought for freedom, but they failed, leaving countless corpses in their wake.

Defeated and disillusioned, they hung up their guns and went their separate ways, all hoping to find some small bit of peace amidst a universe thick with violence and oppression.

Four decades after their heyday, they each try to stay alive and eke out a living.

But a friend from the past won't let them move on, and neither will their bitterest enemy.

The Stonewolves is season 11 of the Galactic Football League science fiction series by author Scott Sigler.

Enjoy it as a standalone story or listen to the entire GFL series beginning with season one, The Rookie.

Search for Scott Sigler, S-I-G-L-E-R, wherever you get your podcasts.